You Spin Me Round Like A Record
by WhatWldMrsWeasleyDo
Summary: Lee/Blaise. Lee likes the look of fashion designer, Blaise, when he gets to interview him. Unfortunately, Blaise is none too impressed by Lee's look.


**Notes:** A big thank you to my beta, emansil_12. This was written for hp_rarefest on live journal for prompt 94, _Blaise thinks he's just too glam for Lee, but he's got another thing coming_, submitted by: alley_skywalker.

**Disclaimer**:Harry Potter characters are the property of J.K. Rowling and Bloomsbury/Scholastic. No profit is being made, and no copyright infringement is intended.

* * *

"Good Morning, witches and wizards. This is Lee Jordan, your breakfast time DJ on WWN. I'll be with you until ten o'clock. Thanks to Marietta for a great early morning show. Stick around for some great tunes, the usual Tuesday morning games, and an interview with a special guest from the world of fashion. I'll give you some clues as to who that might be after this track. It's an oldie but a goodie. Who remembers the Wyrd Sisters? Send in a Patronus if you've got any special memories relating to them. Here's their old song, _She Swooped Like a Horntail and My Heart Caught Fire_. Unmistakable guitar intro."

Lee pointed his wand at the gramophone and the song faded in. He checked his notes to work out exactly who it was that he was going to interview. He vaguely remembered Blaise Zabini from school – a Slytherin in Ron or Ginny's year, he thought. Not a Quidditch player, but by the time Lee had left, the boy had been noticeably good-looking. Not that Lee was into pretty little boys. It was more that the kid had looked like he might have potential.

That made him three or four years younger than Lee. So, as Lee was now twenty eight, Zabini must have either achieved or destroyed that potential by now. Not that any of those facts were suitable ones for Lee to be presenting to his listeners. Marietta waved at him through the soundproof glass as she left. Now there was a girl who definitely had a face for radio! Those pimpled letters were never going to fade. Hermione Granger certainly was a very creative, clever witch even then. Lee grinned and waved back.

He tuned his ear back into the song. The Wyrd Sisters were into the third verse already. Whoever had told them that they could get away with rhyming _nesting_ with _bastion_? He set up the next record on the other gramophone, using a careful positioning spell to get the needle to hover over just the right spot.

He tried to pick a clue about Zabini to offer to his listeners by stabbing at the notes in front of him with his quill. Zabini's agent had been very clear that any mention of the designer's mother and her many deceased husbands would result in his guest walking straight out of the interview. So that was not a good paragraph for his quill to land on. If Lee alluded to that in his introduction then the feature would be over before it had begun.

The Patronuses were flying in now, and Gabrielle was scribbling down anything interesting, so he couldn't even ask her to sort him out some clues. She was desperately keen to break into a radio career, which Lee thought was a waste with her looks and charisma. She should be an actress like Zabini's infamous mother. Not that he was into pretty girls, and if he had been then he wouldn't have made a move on his best friend's sister-in-law's sister.

His producer, Max, made a winding down motion through the glass, as the song came to an end and Gabrielle levitated a sheet of parchment in his direction. He snatched it out of the air as he faded the record and brought up his mic in one smooth wand-motion.

"Of course, that was the Wyrd Sisters, and a lot of you seem to have some vivid memories of them. Quite a few relating to that great gig they played at Hogwarts during the Triwizard Tournament. We've got one here from an Oliver Wood which says... uh, no, I can't read that out on air," he glared at Gabrielle, "but that does sound like a very happy memory indeed, you naughty boy. Those Beauxbatons girls, eh? We've had another Patronus in from a Sheridan Silvertone in Silver End, who says that The Wyrd Sisters' _Inferi Invasion_ was played as the first dance at his daughter's wedding last year, so he's got very happy memories of that. Perhaps not the most romantic of their tunes, but never mind. I've got a new, electronic remix of a Celestina song coming up next..."

Beyond the glass, Max opened the door to a tall, slim man. Merlin's scrotum! Lee had run out of time. He wished he'd never started this _Guess the Guest_ feature.

"...but before that, here are your five clues-" Why had he gone with five? "- as to the identity of our guest this morning." He coughed off mic and stared at the notes.

He made the mistake of looking up then, right at the man shaking hands with Max. He's got a great arse and lickable skin were surely not appropriate clues for the listening public. Those would definitely have them choking on their porridge! Lee noticed long, thin and truly elegant fingers, too. There was no way those could miss his prostrate.

"Erm. Right. He studied Art in Florence, before going on to work with Madame Malkin on Diagon Alley." Now Lee was just reading the notes. Was that one clue or two? "I've already told you that he's in the fashion industry." Don't mention the mother. Don't mention Slytherin. Don't mention the war.

"He's great friends with business-woman Pansy Parkinson." Lee kicked himself, he might as well have said _Possible Death Eater tendencies_, "And lastly -" that earlier one was going to have to count as two, his mind was going blank. Don't mention those firm thighs and how they could wrap around a waist. "He's six foot two." Crap! What a pile of dragon-poo of a clue. His height? Lee was losing it. "So, get your synapses sorting out that lot while we listen to Dennis Creevey's latest techno reworking, this time of the Celestina classic, _Warm Cloak of Love_." Like a drowning man reaching land, Lee aimed his wand at the second gramophone and the stuttering squeaks of the song began.

Max gave him a look, so Lee flashed him his toothy smile and lounged back in the chair like everything was going to plan. He hoped that Zabini had been concentrating on the producer and hadn't heard that potions-explosion of an introduction. Max led the gorgeous man into Lee's studio.

"Blaise Zabini, Lee."

Lee stuck out his hand without standing. Zabini stretched out his long fingers and touched them to Lee's for the briefest of seconds, with a disdainful look on his face. So perhaps he had heard the introduction.

"Hi, Blaise," Lee said with as much warmth and poise as he could muster. "Anything you'd particularly like us to talk about this morning?"

Zabini lowered himself into the chair opposite Lee's as he snapped, "Not my mother!"

"Hadn't crossed my mind." Did he think Lee was stupid? "You got something in particular to sell to the Wizarding World just now?" Lee's guests usually did.

"Mr. Zabini has another appointment in half an hour, so you'll need to go straight into it when this track ends," Max said.

Lee stared at him, as he slipped back behind the glass. Straight into it? He glanced at Gabrielle, but she was lost in a white fog of Patronuses. He looked at Zabini. The man sneered at him.

"My Spring Collection," the man hissed as though Lee had insulted him by not knowing that.

"Of course. Yeah. I meant apart from that." Lee faded out the Creevey track. "Have you worked out who's sitting opposite me yet? I'm sure you have," he said into the microphone. "Of course, it's the world famous fashion designer, Blaise Zabini. So, Blaise, how's it going with the spring collection?"

"It's going really well," Zabini drawled, "I'm incredibly pleased with what we've achieved this year. There are a few surprises in there." He looked warily at Lee, then clearly decided that the DJ couldn't be trusted to ask the right questions, and so pretty much launched into a verbal Press Release: "We're revealing the collection on Friday night, of course, at the Cerise Unicorn Hotel. No tickets still available at this stage. We sold out really early this year..."

Lee hoped that some of his listeners were interested in Zabini's talk of tones, textures and themes, because he certainly couldn't give a shit. He let his eyes roam and his thoughts drift as the designer droned on. Whatever that green colour was called which Zabini was wearing, it certainly complimented his skin, so maybe the guy did know something. His skin glowed and it was the most gorgeous, creamy brown – quite a bit lighter than Lee's own skin, with maybe a hint of olive in there. Lee wondered how it would take ink and whether Blaise had any tattoos hidden away anywhere.

His eyes were almond-shaped and deep brown, with long, black lashes. His cheekbones were high and sharp. Lee pictured himself licking a flat tongue over them; he wondered whether it would hurt. His mouth was full-lipped and wide enough to take a big cock in deep, and it was – Abanazar's anus! It wasn't moving anymore. Zabini had stopped talking. They had dead air.

"Brilliant!" Lee gushed. "That sounds fantastic. So. If you were going to give me a makeover then what would you suggest?" He looked through the glass to Max, to judge how angry he was, to try to work out how long he'd zoned out for. Didn't look too bad.

Zabini, meanwhile, was eyeing up Lee's scruffy converse, faded combats and worn, grey robe. Finally his gaze lighted on Lee's dreads.

"Come on, now, I'm sure the listeners want to know," Lee babbled to cover the time taken up by the silent scrutiny.

"I couldn't possibly give you a make-over," the former Slytherin finally drawled. "You're a lost cause."

Lee forced out a good-natured laugh. "Time for another record, I think," he said hurriedly, levitating a disc across the studio. "So, what sort of music do you usually listen to at home, Blaise?"

"Exclusively classical music," Blaise replied unhelpfully.

Once the song was established, Zabini cast a _Tempus_. "Time to go," he said and rose to his feet.

It had hardly been the most pleasant encounter, but Lee found himself feeling disappointed. "So soon?" he asked.

Zabini nodded tersely.

"Do we get any comps for this?" Lee asked. "I mean, will I see you at this fashion show of yours?" The first attempt sounded crass and the second desperate. Lee decided to shut up.

Zabini looked down his shapely nose. "Those who matter would give their grandmother's souls for a ticket. We do not give any away for free. In any event, had you been listening, you would know that we have been sold out for months. Not that you have the capability to even understand such a collection if you did see it."

"So. Erm. This is it, then?"

"I'm leaving now."

"We could meet up, maybe. Like a date or whatever," Lee found himself gushing. He was mortified. But a bit hopeful, too. Not that all men in fashion had to be gay or anything. Pretty good odds, though.

Zabini released a dry laugh which would have been in-keeping for a supervillain. "A date? With you?" He marched towards the door.

The record was ending, Lee lined up another hastily which could run straight after it as he asked, "But why not?"

"Look in a mirror," Zabini snapped without turning round.

* * *

"So, Gab. You're like French and that. You do that chic thing, yeah?"

Gabrielle looked at Lee over the cloud of Patronuses on her desk. He was talking to her! And he thought she was chic? She switched on a modicum of the old Veela allure and fluttered her eyelashes at him. "Oui, Lee," she said, hoping that he would find the rhyming cute or something. He was into music, wasn't he?

When her big sister had come over to England to work as an intern she'd ended up marrying her boss. Gabrielle was hoping to pull off the same trick. She thought Lee Jordan was pretty close to being her perfect man.

"So you could, like, do me a make-over-type-thingummy, right?" he asked.

Gabrielle sprang to her feet, horrified. "Ah, non, Lee! But you are so cool. You do not need to change a thing." She dipped her head and blushed becomingly. She really hoped that the Veela genes were doing their thing. "You are 'ot just 'ow you are!"

"Did you not hear that interview?" Lee sank into Max's chair. He sounded dispirited.

Actually, Gabrielle had been too busy fending off filthy reminiscences about The Wyrd Sisters, but she thought it would be rude to admit that her attention had been away from his broadcast, so she nodded.

"Bloody Blaise Zabini!" Lee muttered.

"Yes. What does 'e know?"

Lee stared at her. "About fashion? What does Blaise Zabini know about fashion?"

Gabrielle wasn't really sure who they were talking about so she shut up. A hare Patronus skipped onto the desk and started to jabber warnings about infestations of wrackspurts, which set off the otter one which Gabrielle had just managed to silence (because there actually was a limit to the knowledge a young girl should be exposed to regarding the private parts of Quidditch players, even if that was a memory someone associated with a particular song). Gabrielle waited for Lee to say something to which she could respond intelligibly; she concentrated on releasing more allure.

"We'll go shopping after work, right?" Lee asked, showing no signs of being affected by the powers of her creature inheritance.

Still, it sounded like it could be a date, or could be turned into a date by a determined Frenchwoman, so Gabrielle nodded.

"News ends in thirty seconds!" Max warned from the doorway. "Get out of my seat, Jordan."

Lee jumped up and out of the production booth, but not without muttering something about disliking the way his producer addressed "the talent".

Gabrielle pointed her wand at the hare Patronus and it disappeared, as Lee set up the next record and Max counted down on raised fingers.

"Thanks very much for the news there, Ernie. Just before it we were talking about fashion..."

Gabrielle tried to take notes on broadcast-able Wyrd Sisters reminiscences, clear Patronuses and listen and the same time.

"Mr Zabini thinks I'm a lost cause, but what do you think? Send in your fashion tips for me and I'll try to read out as many as I can after the next song, which is, quite appropriately, by the always well-dressed Greengrass sisters and it's called, _Never Kissed a Death Eater_, which might not be true anymore for one of the girls, although I'm not one to gossip..."

He was asking his listeners for more Patronuses? Gabrielle sighed. She hadn't cleared the first lot yet, and she needed to work out which trendy robe shops to take Lee to after the show, and which nice restaurants were near trendy clothes shops so that they could enjoy a romantic lunch together while they were at it. She killed the otter Patronus vindictively with a burst of wandless magic just as it was saying something about sexy Bulgarian accents. Her sexy French accent wasn't getting her anywhere.

Max sat in his chair and Gabrielle wished it was Lee. "Barking up the wrong tree," he said sympathetically, but Gabrielle never had been any good at English idioms so she just smiled.

* * *

Lee had wanted to go shopping somewhere fashionable and Gabrielle had picked the perfect place: Paris. You couldn't get any more fashion than that. Could you? To be honest, Lee didn't even know.

It wasn't that Blaise's assessment of him had stung, he told himself, and it wasn't because he fancied the stuck-up Slytherin designer, either. Even if he did, then he wasn't going to start trying to change himself just to pick up some over-groomed son-of-a-witch. This was a professional thing. It was important that the saviour of WWN be seen to be up-to-date. Otherwise he might lose the coveted breakfast slot to some upstart wannabe like Marietta, or that American wizard with the nice shins who'd started doing the teatime slot (but had a girlfriend, damn it!).

Gabrielle brought him an armful of robes off the racks. She was doing something weird with her eyes, but he ignored it. Maybe she'd got some Patronus in them or something (was that even possible?) and that was why she kept blinking at him. She stopped blinking long enough to look right into his own eyes and say, "Zese look like your size. Not zat I've been looking at your body or anyzing." Then she giggled. Must be a French thing, he decided.

"That one's pink!" he complained. "Do I have to wear girly colours to be glam?"

"Glam?" Gabrielle asked. "Zis weel look well against your skin." She pouted. "Although, I prefer ze combat trousers."

"No, no. Lost cause, apparently. Not the pink. There's a limit. Chuck us that pale green. Blaise looked good in green, didn't he? Reckon I can pull it off? Or will it look like I'm copying him?"

Gabrielle looked confused and did some more pouting and fluttering before looking into his eyes again. "Zere ees a cafe round ze corner from 'ere where we could 'ave lunch soon," she said.

Lee pulled off his T-shirt and looked at himself in the mirror. "Better try these poncey robes on I suppose." He looked down at his bare belly, aware that Gabrielle was making a strange choking noise behind him. "Better miss lunch if I'm going to get these to fit properly."

"No, no! You are perfect! Zat eez a... zat ees a..." then she started babbling in French so Lee switched off.

"Nah. If I'm paying top whack then I'd better not shove it all out of place with my flab." He pulled the green robe from unresisting fingers and shoved it over his head. When his dreads got caught in the sequins at the neck, he swore. "Maybe I should just cut these things off. Getting a bit old for them anyway."

He caught sight of his intern in the mirror behind him and she was vigorously shaking her head.

"I s'pose it is part of my image, might be professional suicide to lose the dreads." He pulled them clear and shook his head. "Not sure about the fabric on this. What d'you reckon, Gab? Girls get this stuff, don't you? Do you think I should take my trousers off now?"

All he heard behind him was a breathless "Ah oui, ah oui, ah oui."

* * *

Lee couldn't quite believe how much money that trip had cost him. Still, he'd got three top-of-the-range outfits and a couple of pairs of uncomfortable shoes out of it. One thing he had learnt for sure was that he wasn't ever going to go shopping with Gabrielle again. The drooling! The eyelash batting! The swoon in the changing room of the underwear place! It had been bloody embarrassing. He wondered whether she had an undisclosed medical condition and had started to watch her more carefully at work, for symptoms he might have missed previously.

It had therefore been Angelina whose advice he had sought on haircare and skin treatments. He wanted skin as soft and even as Blaise had. If Gabrielle found out that it wasn't her advice that he was taking anymore, then he would tell her that it was a black thing. It was more of a sanity thing really.

And so he sat back on a floaty chair in a fashionable spa and listened to Angelina gabbling on about the sexiness of his best friend. He tried to block out the details about George's anatomy and prowess, wishing that he hadn't agreed to pay for her to have the same treatments as him in order to get her company and advice. He really wished she'd opt for teeth bleaching or lip plumping or something else which would shut her up.

He decided to have a go at changing the subject as the Elves rubbed gryffon albumen into their skin. "I can't decide which outfit I'm going to go with tonight."

"What's tonight?" Angelina asked, momentarily distracted from her list of the intimate differences between the Weasley twins.

"Aha!" Lee said, in what he hoped was an irritating way. "I am so glad that you asked."

"And?"

"Tonight is the Remembrance Dinner. The cream of Wizarding Society will gather at the Parkinson Mansion."

"What's that got to do with you?" Angelina asked rudely.

The Elf who was working on Lee's nails changed hands. He lifted the back of his hand to the light, and pale scar lines glinted in the fairy lights that the salon insisted on. "Master is wanting that I remove this imperfection?"

Lee snatched his hand away. "Don't you bloody dare! Do you know what that mark is?"

"Here we go again," Angelina muttered.

"That is a Blood Quill scar," Lee informed the unimpressed Elf. "Do you know who else has one of these?"

The creature shook its head.

"Only Harry bleeding Saviour Potter, that's all!" Lee said. "That's how I got a ticket for tonight, actually."

"That still work?" Angelina asked. "I was his Quidditch captain, I'm engaged to his brother-in-law, and I couldn't get tickets for that dinner! You both pissed off the Umbitch and that's enough is it?"

"Well, it's more because of Potterwatch," Lee conceded.

Angelina sighed. "Ok. I s'pose we are all grateful to you for that."

"It's less gratitude and more fear," Lee admitted as his feet were placed in a warm bowl of kelpies' tears. His feet were going to be inside his expensive shoes all evening and for a moment he resented the expense, but then he realised that he might get lucky. There was no knowing what fetishes a weird Slytherin might have, and cost stopped being a concern.

"Fear?" Angelina prompted.

"Yeah, I mentioned that I might revive it: broadcast his whereabouts and planned movements every morning. Then I mentioned the dinner and it turned out that Shacklebolt had got a Wrackspurt infestation so he had to pull out; Harry sorted it so that I got his ticket."

"I thought Luna was going to let you know if there were Wrackspurts around so you could warn everyone through your radio show."

Lee shrugged. "She says she sent a Patronus but we never got it. Worked out ok for me so I'm not that bothered."

"George has got this gorgeous sprinkling of freckles on his left hip," Angelina said with a sigh. "I try to fit my hand right over it when we-"

"So, you gonna help me pick out my outfit? Work out how the scarf's meant to twist round the collar?"

"Er, yeah. Alright. Who's this in aid of then? You after one of the new administration's leading lights?"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Well, you've never bothered with high fashion and beauty treatments before. You once told me that moisturiser was for wimps. It's not like you to blackmail your way into some fancy society dinner either. They won't be playing techno and drinking shots out of rentboys' navels you know."

"That was only that one party. Maybe two. Years ago. I do know how to behave at a proper dinner party. As long as there aren't too many forks."

"You'll only enjoy it if you get a shag out of it, though." Angelina tipped her head back so that the elf could lather up and rinse out the Boggart serum from her braids.

"Nothing like that," Lee protested. "What was that you were saying earlier about George's tongue?"

"Master is wanting that I massage all of his forehead?" the elf asked. "Here, where the hair used to be as well?"

Angelina chuckled.

"Master shouldn't be frowning like that!" the elf scolded. "That is how he is getting all these wrinkles already."

"Ok. I get it," Angelina said. "You're not on the pull, you're just getting old. You didn't have to worry about what you wore when you were young and hip, but now -"

"If you must know, Blaise Zabini's going to be there! I don't fancy him, that's not it. Only he insulted my clothes last time I saw him, and I wanted to prove him wrong. That's all."

Angelina laughed so hard that she got soapy water in her mouth. "Zabini! You must be joking! You're going to try to impress Zabini! You don't have a hope in hell of pulling that stud."

"Why not?" Lee asked anxiously. "Is he straight?"

Angelina just laughed harder. Lee was pleased when she started to choke.

* * *

"Ah, Lee Jordan! 'Ow very smart you look. I almost didn't recognize you." Fleur Weasley looked behind him. "You do not bring a date?"

Lee should have realised that she was going to be here. This dinner was in honour of Cedric Diggory's memory after all, and now that he was here he could see the dais where the still-living Triwizard Champions were due to sit. He hadn't thought things through, though. There had only been one fellow guest Lee had been interested in when Harry had shown him the list.

"I'm filling in for Shacklebolt," he said quickly and looked over her shoulder at the other guests, searching for one person in particular. Not that he cared what Zabini thought of his outfit or anything.

"It is a pity," Fleur continued. "I think my sister would have enjoyed this evening very much."

"Eh?"

"For a man whose job is speaking, sometimes you do not have a very wide vocabulary, do you? My sister, Gabrielle, she would like to be here with you dressed so smart."

Lee couldn't imagine many things worse than being blinked at by his intern all night, but he smiled politely.

"She enjoyed your visit to Paris very much. It is a pity that you did not take her for lunch. This dinner might have made up for that." Fleur winked. "She has noticed that you have been glancing at her in the studio since that date. You should ask her out again."

"Date? Ask her out? Glances?" Lee realised that he'd said that out loud. He hadn't been able to stop himself, it had been such a shock. "No, no, no."

"Mais oui, oui, oui!" Fleur grasped his hands. "She talks about nothing but you, you know. She is very fond of you. Her admiration is great. And I think that yours is for her also?"

"Bloody hell, Fleur. I hope not." That made sense of the eyelid thing, and the pouty thing and the... "She's barking up the wrong tree I'm afraid."

Fleur's understanding of idiom was a great deal better than her sister's. She frowned.

"I'm as bent as marzipan doorknob. I thought George would have told Bill. I thought everyone knew."

"As bent as a...?" Fleur's understanding of idiom had its limits and Lee had reached it. She frowned and let go of his hands.

Lee took the opportunity and backed off, searching out his quarry.

* * *

Blaise Zabini was as bored as it was possible to be. He hated these bloody dinners, and wished Pansy would just stop throwing them. If she hadn't provided the start-up money for his business then he wouldn't bother going. She had some perverse notion about reinstating her family's standing. Frankly, no amount of caviar h'ors d'oevres for the Great and the Good were going to remove the infamy of her being the student who had wanted to hand Potter over to the Dark Lord. Blaise had understood her reasoning at the time, but the repercussions to their social standing had been devastating.

He ought to be working the room, trying to collect new customers, but it wasn't worth it. Judging by the way this lot were dressed they wouldn't know a well-cut ensemble from a gravedigger's shift. Once a scruffy Gryffindor, always a scruffy Gryffindor. He sipped his drink, then wondered what it was and looked into its ghastly magenta depths. When he looked up again, he had a shock. Surely that was one of this season's Maison Sorcier signature robes? What on earth was it doing here? He had greatly admired the cut of that particular item when he'd seen it on the catwalk last month. It skimmed the derriere in a most flattering way. And what a derriere it was skimming now!

Blaise straightened his sleeves, and ran a careful hand through his hair before heading after the beautiful lines of the French dress robes – and its occupant's equally beautiful lines. That hat! It was by Chapeau Magicien, surely. Who on earth could be wearing such divine pieces to a dreary affair like this one? No friend of Potter's had ever had any taste before. He got rid of his glass of pinkish goop into a plant pot on a side table as he crossed the room.

Whoever the well-dressed man was, he was making the mistake of talking to the super-loser Neville Longbottom. Longbottom was wearing tweed for Merlin's sake! As Blaise reached them, he heard Longbottom say, "It's a really busy time of year in the greenhouse, I could do with an apprentice or something really."

Blaise thought he recognised the voice of the man who replied, "Really? Do you want my intern?" but he couldn't place it.

He put his hand on the velvet-soft shoulder of the exquisite pale green robe. "Excuse me," he began, "but I couldn't help noticing that you're wearing –" Merlin's sock-garters!

The man had turned. He smiled. His teeth were white and even, his skin was smooth and the dark dreadlock which fell onto his cheek was in perfect condition. Apart from those things, the man would have looked exactly like that idiot disc jockey Lee Jordan.

Blaise gaped, which was unbecoming. Luckily he was spared looking stupid for too long by the chiming of the dinner bell.

* * *

Lee cursed the gong! Finally he had Zabini's attention, and the stupid hostess had to interrupt them. It had been positive attention, he was sure of that. At least it had been until the designer had recognised him.

Zabini scurried back into the crowds of guests and the next time Lee saw him, he was speaking to the very hostess who had just destroyed their moment. He didn't even seem to be telling her off, he looked more like he was pleading with her. Lee walked over to the table with Neville at his elbow. He hoped the heroic herbologist _was_ going to take his smitten intern off his hands. He was single, and a better catch than Lee, surely. Judging by the way Neville kept staring at Fleur, her younger sister should be just his type, too.

There was an awful lot of silverware on the table. Evading Death Eaters was one thing, but a rack of assorted forks might just be his undoing. Gold smoke in the shape of letters floated above each place setting. Lee had the misfortune to stop in front of the chair reserved for the Head of the Welsh department and so it took him a while to figure out that all those Ls were forming a name. The witch in question politely guided him out of her way and he went searching for his own name in gold smoke.

He thought he saw it on the other side of the table, between Healer Bumpits and Susan Bones. As he scurried towards it he noticed that the names alternated between wizards and witches. So, Parkinson was wedded to the old girl-boy-girl-boy seating formula was she? That was a shame. By the time he got to the place which he had thought was his, his name was spelling itself _Horace Slughorn_. Around the room, several other guests were looking as confused as Lee felt as golden smoke skittered around the table.

Lee noticed that Pansy Parkinson wasn't in her designated spot at the head of the table. He looked round the room for her. She was in a dark corner, still whispering with none other than Blaise Zabini. Wand-flashes sparked between them. Lee stepped back to wait for them to finish doing whatever it was they were doing before he made another attempt to locate his seat. Ginny Weasley was beside him, doing the same thing, so he asked her for advice on the forks.

After a couple of minutes, Pansy Parkinson strode back to the table and graciously suggested to the people she passed that they should sit down now. Lee stayed where he was. He watched Blaise Zabini make his own way to the dinner table and when the delicious – if supercilious – man sat down, Lee spotted his own name hovering above the next seat. Well, well, well. So all that kerfuffle had been in his honour; Zabini had been so keen for his company that he had been prepared to persuade Parkinson to maim her seating plan. That was very good news indeed. With a smile on his face, and all the advice about cutlery dropping from his thoughts, he made his way over to sit beside Blaise.

"I thought I was a lost cause," he commented as he sat down.

"Clearly someone has more talent to reform the badly dressed than I do," Zabini replied.

Neither of them mentioned the last minute change of seating, though among the other guests around them that was the major topic of conversation.

"Not at all. I always dress like this for social occasions. There's no point at work, of course. Nobody can see inside their wireless sets."

Zabini looked sceptical, but he just asked, "Did you get these pieces in Paris, or did you have them shipped over?"

It took Lee a heartbeat to work out what he was on about. "Oh, the clothes? No, I went there, of course. Got to try these things on, haven't you?"

Zabini purred his agreement. A complex salad which included avocado, lollo rosso and impossible vertical shapes, appeared on the plates before them. Salad dressing drizzled itself over it, but the two men ignored the sight in favour of admiring each other.

"Well, this is a pleasant surprise," Zabini said. "In fact it is two pleasant surprises. First your appearance, and secondly your appearance at this dinner. They are usually such dull affairs."

Lee took a moment to unravel that. He figured out that Zabini liked the way he looked and was pleased to be sitting next to him. The feeling was – of course – mutual.

"Wine?" Zabini asked.

It was elf-made stuff and very good. Lee sipped and tried to think of an opening conversational gambit. He tried, "How did the Spring Collection show go?", then had a fleeting panic as he wondered whether he ought to have read up about that so that he knew the answer before he came.

It was a good question, though, one which allowed Zabini to talk about himself, which looked to be his favourite topic of conversation. Lee had no problem with that, he liked to talk about himself, too. Eventually, he got the chance to. The two of them drank more than they ate and talked more than they drank and the evening passed in a pleasant blur. As they rose to leave at the end of it, Lee asked, "So what about that date, then?"

"Well, as long as it's Paris, I think I might have to consider accepting," Blaise replied.

That meant that Lee was going to have to have at least one more conversation with Gabrielle then.

* * *

That evening was warm, stars shone in the clear sky above Paris, competing with the floodlighting of the Eiffel Tower. So, this was the most romantic city in the world? Lee could feel its allure a lot better now that he had Blaise by his side, and no part-veela intern simpering and blinking at him.

He'd got a restaurant recommendation off Gabrielle before he suggested that she go and work with Neville. She sulked a bit until she was shown the newspaper cuttings on her new boss and then she became thoughtful and eventually happy. Max was less pleased and told Lee that he was going to have to deal with his own Patronuses from now on because he certainly didn't have the time for that sort of thing. Lee decided that he could worry about that later.

He'd owled Blaise, booked a table, got an appointment at the spa (this time without Angelina), tried on all his posh clothes and decided on an outfit, all during the records. Max was twitchy, but Lee managed to avoid any dead air so he couldn't really complain.

Blaise looked fantastic, and Lee was pretty sure that he looked bloody great himself. The menu had been baffling, but the food had tasted good, and now the two men were strolling through the streets of the French capital. The conversation hadn't even dried up yet.

"So, Blaise, when I interviewed you, I got the feeling that you found me irritating. Still can't stand me?" Lee gave him a cheeky grin and risked putting an arm round his waist.

Blaise didn't push the arm away. "No."

"So what changed? Is it just the clothes?"

"Yes. And the way your body fills them. I'm very shallow."

The walked comfortably for a few minutes. Finally Lee said, thoughtfully, "Nah. It's your thing. I couldn't date a Celestina Warbeck fan."

"How about Classical Music?"

Lee pulled a face. "That's just because you don't know any better. Wait until I sit you down with my record collection."

Blaise laughed. "And I will introduce you to my spring collection." His hand slid down Lee's back. "You certainly have the figure to do it justice." He continued down until he was stroking Lee's arse. Then he sighed. "Well, if we're going to get a hotel room here, then I suppose we should start looking for one. While those pieces look divine on you, I find that I'm quite keen to take them off you and check out what's underneath."

_Fin_


End file.
